raven-software posts

Quake 4 has been the only PC game in id Software's Quake series of first person shooter that has been unavailable to download and purchase (legally at least). Today, over five years after the game was first released to retail stores, Quake 4 is now available to purchase and download via the Impulse download service.

First released back in the fall of 2005, this fourth installment of the Quake series was a collaboration between id and Raven Software and basically continued the storyline from 1997's Quake II. It was also one of the few games that used id's Doom 3 graphics engine. Originally published by Activision Quake 4 is now owned by id's current owner Bethesda Softworks. You can get the game now for $19.99.

Activision's biggest game franchise by far is the Call of Duty franchise and everyone expects a new game in the series to be released by November of 2011. Now a report from the Los Angeles Times claims that the next game in the shooter series will indeed be Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and that three development teams are working on it.

According to the report, which does not name its sources, the game's main developer Infinity Ward is getting help on the single player campaign from another in-house developer Sledgehammer Games. Infinity Ward apparently needed the help since much of the team left the studio in 2010 following the firing of the studio's founders by Activision. In addition, the article claims that another developer, Raven Software, is handling the multiplayer portions of Modern Warfare 3. The downside? A Call of Duty spin-off game from Sledgehammer Games is now on hold while the team helps Infinity Ward.

In related news, our sister site Joystiq has all of the new and gory details of the current legal battle between Activision and Infinity Ward's former heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. In short, the court has now officially added Electronic Arts as a defendant in Activision's lawsuit against the duo.

Developer Raven Software is rumored to be back to work on a stealth-based James Bond action game for its owner and publisher Activision. The rumors come from the James Bond fan site MI6.com which, via unnamed sources, claims the game is back in development following the approval of the bankruptcy plan of the owners of the James Bond movie franchise MGM.

Raven Software, once one of the biggest of Activision's internal development studios, has lately suffered from its games not selling as well as anticipated despite mostly solid reviews. It has suffered from two separate layoffs, one in 2009 and another earlier this year. In addition to the James Bond game Raven is also rumored to be working on map packs for Call of Duty Black Ops. So far Activision has not responded to these new James Bond rumors.

We've been thinking a lot about Raven Software lately. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the developer was Activision's highest profile game creator, making first person shooter titles like the Soldier of Fortune series and two Star Wars: Jedi Knight games, among many other titles. Lately the developer has been hit with hard times as some of its more recent games like Singularity failed to reach a wide audience.

Just before Raven got bought by Activision, the developer was making games in the Heretic/Hexen fantasy shooter series which were co-developed with id Software. These were, and still are, great games that look a bit dated visually today. So we got excited to hear about a team of mod makers who are close to completing a Hexen mod using id's Doom 3 engine. As you can see from the above screenshot, the Hexen: Edge of Chaos mod is using the engine's visuals to make a great looking updated version of the title. The mod is planned for release next month with the first hub containing three maps.

Reports from web sites like Shacknews and Kotaku are stating via unnamed sources that Activision's internal game developer Raven Software has been hit with yet another round of layoffs. The new reports claim that 20 to 40 team members at the Madison, Wisconsin-based developer have been let go, reducing the dev teams at Raven to just one. Activision's official statement admits that "Raven Software is realigning its workforce to better reflect the studio's upcoming slate" but does not give the specific numbers of workers that are affected by this latest move.

Activision previously laid off a number of Raven Software's team members in August 2009. Today's move come after Raven released its latest first person shooter game Singularity last June which got positive game reviews for the most part but suffered from poor sales and not much of a marketing push from Activision. Kotaku claims that Raven will now be working on downloadable game content but specific game titles have not been officially announced.

This patch updates Singularity to v1.01. It addresses the texture streaming issue and fixes a network connectivity problem that caused the game to get stuck on the "Finding Best Match" screen in multiplayer. Patch notes can be found after the jump and the full game review can be found here.

At a time when military themed shooters dominate sales, it's refreshing to have a sci-fi action game like Singularity come in to offer up some variety. The game literally puts the power to twist time in the palm of your character's hand with the Time Manipulation Device, TMD for short. Not exactly the most creative name for a device, but it can be used to pull off a variety of spectacular moves, most prominently aging objects or reverting them back to an original usable state. But even with the power to distort time at the player's disposal, they'll still need to rely on old fashioned firepower to fight back enemies. In that respect, there's very little that distinguishes the game from most other shooters.Check out all Singularity downloads

The Raven Software-developed first person shooter Singularity is due for release in the US this week but it's already out in the UK and according to Voodoo Extreme there's a big issue in the PC version of the game that's been discovered. According to the site the bug is causing the high-end textures in the Unreal Engine 3-based game to take several minutes to load for each level.

The site offers up some partial workarounds to get the high-end textures to load faster but its a fairly complicated procedure. Hopefully Raven can up up with a patch that will fix the texture streaming bug before the game ships in the US.

If you thought Singularity was all about time manipulation in single player, this developer video will set you straight. The main multiplayer mode comes down to being a turf war between human soldiers and the mutant creatures running around on the island. Each soldier and creature comes with special abilities and offer a unique gameplay experience. Players will have a chance to test them all out when the game releases next week on June 29th.

We have seen time manipulation in PC games in the last like Timeshift and in some of the Prince of Persia games. Now we are getting a new interpretation of that kind of gameplay in Singularity. Announced by publisher Activision nearly two years ago the Raven Software-developed title is now close to being released on June 29. The title mixes shooting, temporal powers and a storyline with a Cold War bent.

Big Download got a chance to ask some questions to Dan Vondrak, Singularity's project lead at Raven Software. He reveals how the game came about, some of his favorite features and more.